Thursday, August 3, 2017

Why Event Marketers Should Learn To Lean On Their Ticketing Partners | hypebot

As the one responsible for the marketing of a concert or event, there's typically a great deal of pressure to up the headcount of attendees. One way to ease some of the burden in this situation is to get assistance from your ticketing partner. Here we look at three major ways this can be done.

If you’re a marketing leader within an event organization, only you can understand the complex challenges that are unique to your role. Chances are, your title is accompanied by login credentials for an innumerable amount of third party platforms, an unending list of lofty revenue goals, and the promise of getting a record-number of attendees through the door.

Often, the real obstacle is understanding how to achieve these goals without hiring a new digital marketing coordinator or investing in yet another promising tool — both of which involve chipping away at your precious marketing budget. If you’ve never considered the value of leaning on your ticketing provider to assist with these goals, then perhaps you should.

Here are some of the initiatives that you’re already losing sleep over, and the ways in which your ticketing provider can (and should) help out:

Optimize your online ad spend

As you continue to grow and scale your business, your team may leverage marketing automation tools, sponsors, or even partners, to generate more impressions and ultimately sell more tickets. After bringing on these partners or launching those new digital campaigns, it is your responsibility to understand which strategies are performing, and which are expendable.

Rather than trusting that these efforts are generating ticket sales, find a ticketing provider that can effectively track the impressions, tickets sold, and total revenuegenerated from each campaign. Did you recently find a social media influencer who claims a percentage lift in page views? Hold them to it by providing them with a unique tracking link. Is there a new retargeting toolthat’s boosting your total impressions, but failing to generate more ticket sales? Take your data one step further by partnering with a ticketing provider that can actually track post-click conversions at each stage in your purchase flow.

By leveraging real-time data from your ticketing provider, you’ll have the insights you need to protect your marketing budget and prevent your team from renewing a contract with a partner that isn’t pulling their weight.

Effectively convert more ticket buyers

Of course, all of these efforts to drive more visits to your website are null and void if your team is unable to effectively convert those potential ticket buyers. You may have a stellar social media strategy or a team of highly-connected event ambassadors, but without a conversion-winning purchase experience, you won’t see the highest possible return on your investment.

If you’re unsure what type of purchase experience your ticketing provider is currently providing for your attendees, try testing it yourself. Go through the entire process of purchasing a ticket, and see how it looks on different browsers, from different devices, or in different locations. Are there more than 3 steps in the purchase flow? Is the entire experience mobile-optimized? Are you required to create an account before purchasing?

Studies across the eCommerce industry show that these are some of the most common, and harmful, barriers to conversion. If your ticketing provider isn’t giving your attendees a streamlined purchase experience, it’s not only frustrating for the buyer; it’s counteractive to your marketing efforts. Find a ticketing provider that has architected their purchase flow with conversion in mind, so that you can spend less time worrying about the impact on your digital campaigns.

If your ticketing partner can take this concept one step further, then you’ll be truly set up for sell-out success. Choose a partner who meets your consumers where they are, allowing them to transact on websites where they spend the most time (i.e. Facebook and Spotify)

Provide an on-brand experience

As you continue to strategize on the best way to get the most out of your marketing budget, while converting the highest number of ticket buyers, your role is also to preserve your event organization’s brand. This brand delivers a promise, cultivates a relationship with the consumer, and allows you to differentiate within the event marketplace.

Deviate from that brand, and you’ve broken the authenticity you’ve worked so hard to build. It’s likely that you’ve had to decide if your sponsors accurately represent your brand. Or perhaps you’ve worked with your copywriter to ensure that the content on your website builds trust with your consumers. These may seem like some obvious considerations, but where does your attendees’ perception of your brand begin?

According to Dave Graham, Co-Founder of BottleRock Music Festival, “Delivering a brand and a promise is an art and a science. It’s finding that anchor in your business, and aligning your business to that anchor.” To that extent, does your current ticketing provider align to your brand?

Is the language in the order confirmation email helpful and intuitive? Is the process for retrieving a ticket easy to navigate? Is the event page accessible on any end user’s device, and fast to load? If your online ticketing experience is clunky, inflexible, and unscalable, what message does that send to your attendees?

Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of event marketing is the consideration of your brand’s reflection at every single step in the event experience. Said differently, make sure that each of the digital touches on your ticketing platform are all a positive reflection of your brand. From the moment an attendee clicks to your website, to the second that they land on your ticketing provider’s page to purchase a ticket, you should trust that your ticketing provider will do the heavy lifting.

To find out more about the ways in which Eventbrite looks at solving these challenges, or to speak with an event marketing expert regarding your organization’s goals, contact an event expert here.

Tori Trimm works closely with festival organizers at Eventbrite, and is passionate about helping event entrepreneurs grow & optimize their businesses. A self-proclaimed "event evangelist," she's often found rallying friends to the next food & wine festival or scouring social media for SF's newest pop-up.